


GOLDEN JOINERY

by gensuis



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Arrange Marriage, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Political Intrigue, Political Marriage, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, and needs to accomplish his dream elsewhere, au where claude isnt recognized by house riegan, n the answer is dimitri's lap, political marriage au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-12 05:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20559008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gensuis/pseuds/gensuis
Summary: Dimitri and Claude are married into a political union by their respective countries.That’s what it comes down to then. Duty. “Is this something you want?"“There’s worse folk I could find myself in bed with,” Claude says, unashamed, skin gleaming like burnished gold beneath the oil lights. “I hope you think so too.”Dimitri thinks he doesn’t want this, not truly, but fate has never deemed it necessary to deliver what he’s wanted. He smiles and nods and does so because it is expected of him, and it’s then that smile of Claude’s seems to snuff like a shadow beneath the sun.





	GOLDEN JOINERY

Dimitri is seventeen when his marriage is arranged. As with all things, it is done quickly and with a spare thought for him, masqueraded underneath the veil of _noble duty, _and _this is what Lambert would have wanted, _wielded with the pointed efficiency of a dagger. He has known Rufus’s displeasure in his formative years, the way disobedience is met with reminders of his impotence in Fhirdiadian court, how his uncle’s mouth forms tight, foreboding lines, like a promise-built artifice forming in slow, imposing latticework around him. This marriage is a cage, he thinks. An assurance of power, at best. More land and influence and a reason to hold the throne over Dimitri’s head as though it is a plaything which is, incidentally, exactly how his uncle treats it.

He sees Cornelia’s hand in it, casting bones like an augury and seeming to pull all the answers from it. Like a cure for the plague, or architecture to raise, foundations to tug upwards from the earth. The years have dragged something new from her, as they have from them all. Faces have changed and come out from it lonelier, the baseless accusations flung in all directions in the desperate search for the scapegoat of a beheaded king.

The fiancé they select for him is Almyran, and a man. A political marriage to foster relations between the Almyran people, and those of Faerghus. His uncle tells him wryly, over a tea so bitter that it makes Dimitri’s teeth ache, that if children are to be born, there are ways of doing so that do not require a wife. It makes his stomach clench, horribly. It feels a cruel thought.

He sees the mercenaries that join their ranks not long after. The pillars of Almyran strength, tall, broad-shouldered with braids down to their shoulders. How strange it feels, his dowry in the form of men. Surely the Almyrans must get something from this arrangement too, he thinks. Cornelia’s mind, mayhaps.

The plains of Almyra are plentifully vast. He’s told an irrigation system may soon be in place.

He meets his fiancé for the first time in the salon where his uncle had discussed it with him prior, beneath the family portrait of his father and birth mother, a place he’d stood years before peering over it, looking for any trace of that pink-cheeked woman in his skin, and coming up empty like a loose handful of water. The mahogany table divides them both. Blue-painted plates and teacups spread out over it, delicate as baby’s skin. The nervousness makes him terrified to pick them up, worried over hairline cracks.

Claude is a man with a set of bejeweled eyes that sparkle insincerely as fool’s gold, and a smile that curves like a tautly drawn bow. He drinks his tea without the pinky finger up, all five of them instead curled tightly around the handle. He’s mannerless and lackadaisical, and when he sits, he slumps, slovenly, in the chaise that holds him.

Dimitri’s spine is so straight that it hurts.

“It was surprising,” He says, breaking the awkward silence that stretches shadows-long between them. “For the Almyrans to extend this invitation. Forgive my rudeness, but they’re not often known for their non-violent approach to Fodlan relations.”

Fodlan’s Locket may be a right of the Alliance lands to guard and protect, but what they protect, they do so for all of Fodlan. He’s heard the way the men speak, the way his own uncle has spoken of them: how they speak of the Duscur people, as though the whole lot of them are mud in their mouths.

Claude watches him for a moment, the gold of his vestments glinting and winking all the while, before saying, “I hope you don’t share that sort of sentiment. You and I are about to be _awfully_ close in the coming year.”

The heat tinges his cheeks pink. “I don’t, no. Damning one country for the actions of a few is foolish, at best. Wholly ignorant, at worst.”

That set of eyes continue to watch him, sparkling. Steam rises from his teacup. Pegasus Moon has come, and with it a frigidity that spreads crisply across Faerghus. Snow piles itself in massive heaps on the roofs of the castle, heavy enough to make the walls feel as though they’ve closed in on all sides.

“Forgive _my_ rudeness,” Claude’s voice reminds Dimitri of the first steps in fresh snow. “But that sort of boundless free-thinking isn’t known among your people.”

“I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t,” He says, and Dimitri isn’t sure if he’s sincere. There’s a cat in the kitchens with that exact same sort of face, batting mice between its paws mercilessly. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t quite think that’s known among mine, either. That’s the point of this arrangement, isn’t it? To foster understanding between our people.”

That’s what it comes down to then. Duty. “Is this something you want?”

“There’s worse folk I could find myself in bed with,” Claude says, unashamed, skin gleaming like burnished gold beneath the oil lights. “I hope you think so too.”

Dimitri thinks he doesn’t want this, not truly, but fate has never deemed it necessary to deliver what he’s wanted. He smiles and nods and does so because it is expected of him, and it’s then that smile of Claude’s seems to snuff like a shadow beneath the sun.

They are married at the start of the Horsebow Moon, when the flowers have begun blooming. They wrap Dimitri in the heavy furs associated with Faerghus nobility, and wind the light, vibrant silks of Almyra around Claude. Dimitri expects a shiver, or the shudder of Claude’s exposed body to the familiar chill, but when he walks down the aisle it is with his chin up, shoulders squared.

He keeps his eyes trained forward into Dimitri’s own, even while the monk winds the ribbon around their joined hands and blesses their union. Claude’s hands are warm, despite everything, smaller than Dimitri’s own, and familiar in their callouses.

There is a strange, inexorable impulse in him. He cannot help it – how his palm fluxes into Claude’s own, feeling each rough steppe there, like a well-told story.

The golden ribbon hides his moment of childishness from view of the others, but not from Claude, who’s eyes flash in their depths, who’s fingers tighten around the breadth of Dimitri’s palm, squeezing it. His thumb responds, tracing a line over the delicate bones of the back of Dimitri’s hand. The monk knots the ribbon, tying them neatly into place. The package they are for Faerghus, for Almyra, for other things besides themselves.

Dimitri aches for the throne, his own hands on his own kingdom, but does as he is bid. Looking out into Claude’s face, he’s welcomed to the uncertainty of his dreams and wishes, what he might desire at all.

He thinks: this is not so terrible a sacrifice, and wonders what sacrifice Claude must have made for this, himself.

They make the pledge of marriage together, voices resonating as they’d always been meant to speak it as one. _I belong to myself, _they say, and neither of them believe it. _This is a marriage of equals. _

The crowd awaits the turn of their bodies to them, like an opera performance, the held breath before the climax. And they do, and the crowd roars. Two princes, bound forever, the palms of their free hands flashing with each wave of the wrist.

It feels performative. He feels outside of himself, a ghost of a ghost.

The King of Almyra slices the ribbon free from their hands the moment they step over the threshold, where neither can be seen. It is not the first time he has seen him, but there is a set in his jaw now that loosens an arrow into Dimitri’s throat. Neither of the three of them speak. A strangeness has come over the two of them, he feels, the sinking in of the knowledge that they are married.

That they are strangers, and they are married.

Dimitri feels the weight of his uncle’s hand on his back, pushing them both forward to Dimitri’s bedchambers. _Their_ bedchambers.

His limbs feel heavy, like a death march, and a flick of his gaze to Claude’s own suggests Claude doesn’t feel the same – the certainty etched into every fine feature in his face.

They both know what’s expected of them, once the doors isolate them from the rest of the castle. Dimitri has never so much as pressed his lips to anyone else’s. For now, the two of them remain in the center of the room, looking at one another as though expecting the other to speak first.

Claude’s hands shift, tug at the sash at his waist, loosening it. It pools to the floor. The front of his clothes comes undone, leaving him bare.

Dimitri has seen naked men before, has shared communal baths with others, boys his own age, with spines pale as the stems of new flowers. Claude’s is different. Beautiful, for certain, but frightening too, the dark planes of his skin finely cut, smooth as polished marble.

_He has scars, _Dimitri thinks. _Just like me. _

“You don’t look very impressed,” Claude says.

Dimitri, feeling more clothed than ever before, shudders and tugs the furs tighter around the collar of his neck. “We needn’t – I don’t want this of you, if you do not want it,”

Claude waits a moment. “And what is it that _you_ want?”

“I don’t know,” He replies. A rare moment of bare-faced honesty, to this question, this thought.

Claude seems to consider this for a moment. Dimitri wishes he could understand what goes on in his mind. It feels so strange to lie next to a stranger, so unlike the stories he’d been told as a child, all those fables about true love and marriage and the sanctity of the joined soul, how the body is split into two and one’s partner wanders amongst the sea of people, waiting to be brought together again. Claude seems so far from the other half of him that he has no idea what to feel.

After a moment that spans like an eternity, Claude bends to pick up the clothes on the floor. He puts them on again, the robe, and the multicolored sash, tied tighter than it seemed to be before. They look at one another again.

“Maybe it’s a little sudden after basically dropping my pants in front of you,” Claude says, with measured humor. “But we ought to just get to know one another, first. Before we move on to the good stuff.”

“And if I never want to do that with you?”

“There’s always a nice serving girl to help with that.” Claude jokes.

But it isn’t funny, so Dimitri doesn’t laugh.

“I read about the history of Faerghus,” Claude says, late one night, curled up on the far side of their marriage bed. Dimitri has his back to him, eyes against the stone walls; he has tried desperately to sleep better in the days following their marriage, to exorcise his ghosts and let him remain behind, whatever’s left of him at this point, so that his new husband might sleep easier, without the tossing, without the turning. But Claude keeps strange hours too, it seems; disappears in the night and reappears at will, sleeping in later into the mornings than Dimitri ever would. “There was a plague, not that long ago, right? Your mother died in it.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, hoping Claude might think him asleep.

“Dimitri?”

“Yes,” He says. “That’s true.”

Now Claude’s turn for the silence. This isn’t like the stories he’d heard as a child at all, either, spaces crowding with language, their hearts opening up to one another as though all they’d needed was the key of the other’s lips.

“I’m sorry,” Claude says.

“You shouldn’t be,” Dimitri says back. “I didn’t know her.”

“I haven’t lost a parent, myself,” Claude shifts in the bed enough that Dimitri feels it on the other end, the tug of blankets that forces him to pull at them, tug them over his own body. He can feel the heat of Claude’s body behind him, somewhere, the way it radiates from him as though he’d drank the sun. “So I don’t know what it feels like, that loss. But I’m sure it must hurt, sometimes.”

He thinks of the King of Almyra, with a neck like an ox, near seven feet tall and roiling with muscle. The way he had not even said goodbye to his son, how him and his royal retinue had left in a beat of wings and horse hooves.

The way Claude didn’t seem to think anything of it.

“And your mother, Claude?”

“Alive,” Claude’s voice turns clipped, like snapping twigs. “As far as I’m aware, at least. Why do you ask? Interested?”

“As you’ve said, we’ll be spending a lot of time together. This arrangement doesn’t have to be miserable for both of us.”

“That’s true,” He says. “So what questions do you have? What’s burning in you?”

Dimitri turns over. Claude was closer than he thought he would have been, elbow propped against one of the pillows and his cheek cupped into his hand. Delight spread across his face, as though Dimitri facing him were its own treat.

“What do you love?” Dimitri asks.

And Claude tells him. Poetry, the way the body sways on horseback, the feel of the sun on his skin, books and the way they smell when plucked from the library – every old tome a mapped history of the person that read it before, with ink spills and yellowing pages and dogeared corners.

Dimitri listens. Quiet and interested and liking the sound of Claude’s voice, each sure word set in place, like a tile in a stained glass window.

“And you?” Claude asks. “What do you love?”

“I’m not sure that my hobbies are so interesting as your own,” He means that. “Or that I can speak of them with such genuine passion as yourself.”

"Maybe not," Claude says, but his lips pull into a smile; it's funny. He's funny. “But I’d like to hear them.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please consider leaving a kudos, comment, or making a bookmark if you enjoyed!


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